Extract leading and trailing punctuation from a word for better matching

[talk2MeGooseman]

Both leading and trailing punctuation need to be checked and extracted from around a word so that the string matching and replace can happen. Afterward, the punctuation will be combined again to preserve the structure.

  def extract_punctuation(word)
      leading_punctuation  = word.match(/\A([^a-zA-Z]*)/)[1] rescue ''
      trailing_punctuation = word.match(/[a-zA-Z]+([^a-zA-Z]*)\Z/)[1] rescue ''
      word_length = word.length - leading_punctuation.length - trailing_punctuation.length
      word = word[leading_punctuation.length, word_length]
      return leading_punctuation, word, trailing_punctuation
    end